You're right to compare a unicorn to a cat - even the most walkable neighborhoods aren't really what urbanists want. The most walkable neighborhoods have the great hazard of traffic - so to most, suburbia means a quiet street away from the traffic, whereas urban living means a walkable street but you have to deal with traffic. I think the dream for urbanist families of a walkable place connected to transit where kids can be independent before getting a car is, unfortunately, not today's reality.
I definitely think there is an appeal for a front and back yard, a detached house and even a single story home - stairs are inconvenient, especially with kids. A yards allow you to garden and host, a front yard decorates for the neighborhood, a backyard you party with privacy. A detached home does come with hassles but also customization and ownership - with its ills and pros.
So to most, the choice is between a quite neighborhood where they can have their own yard, but shuttle their kids everywhere and stomach commutes in traffic OR a neighborhood that's usually pricier, where kids are more independent but also interacting more with cars as pedestrians, and the tradeoff is you can walk and transit to more (but not all) of your daily errands. And sadly, for many, living in the city actually means not that much different from living in suburbia, just less green space and the traffic is at your doorstep instead of down the block.
So you've got 4 points of comparison - an urbanist dream, an urbanist present-reality, a suburbanist nightmare (which isn't completely off), and suburbia. The urbanist present is one i'd prefer to the rest, but I understand the desire for suburbia compared to that, while advocating for the unicorn.
Advocates of "dense, urban, walkable places" have, for decades, grotesquely failed in properly organizing and marketing themselves and their beliefs. There isn't even a succinct descriptor or label for us, like "pro-life" or "green", which I'd reckon reduces our group political impact/influence by 90% or more. There's no shared vocabulary, and it's not on the political radar.
You can see the effects of this in the misfiring "missing middle" movement. "Densification" can mean a deliberate project of building a human-scaled town of narrow streets and small shops, or it can (and in my experience almost always does) mean simply grafting five-over-ones onto the existing car-dependent landscape - amounting to a Trojan horse to line the pockets of corporate developers while putting far more cars on the road, and worsening noise, congestion, crowding, etc. for the existing residents. Add that there is often a tie-in (even if only rhetorically) with a laundry list of leftist causes and ideological hobby-horses, and the crude conservative caricature of "liberals coming for the suburbs" is all too frequently right on the money.
After 100 years of crazy experiments on human settlements, we have such a poor understanding of all these issues now. So yes, we have very imperfect choices, and you’re 100% correct in your description that the historic American small town is, in fact, urban. It’s simply how we built human settlements for thousands of years, before the Great Experimenting began in the 1910s and 20s.
That all said, I definitely think there’s a fairly sizeable percentage of Americans that really like their suburbia. I have many family members in this camp. They understand what I like and why, but it’s just not for them. We, as urbanists, should also be honest that some suburbia is quite lovely and can be very liveable. It’s not all one, broad brush.
Or people just prefer suburban life and are reasonably rational about that. I know I do, I have zero interest in living in a city ever again. Maybe different people just have different preferences, and should be allowed to choose for themselves.
Yeah, ideally I prefer a large manor house in a walled estate (at least 5 acres) across the street from a grocery store and a metro stop where I’d be walking distance to everything (very high density, for other people). And the government should subsidize this
You're right to compare a unicorn to a cat - even the most walkable neighborhoods aren't really what urbanists want. The most walkable neighborhoods have the great hazard of traffic - so to most, suburbia means a quiet street away from the traffic, whereas urban living means a walkable street but you have to deal with traffic. I think the dream for urbanist families of a walkable place connected to transit where kids can be independent before getting a car is, unfortunately, not today's reality.
I definitely think there is an appeal for a front and back yard, a detached house and even a single story home - stairs are inconvenient, especially with kids. A yards allow you to garden and host, a front yard decorates for the neighborhood, a backyard you party with privacy. A detached home does come with hassles but also customization and ownership - with its ills and pros.
So to most, the choice is between a quite neighborhood where they can have their own yard, but shuttle their kids everywhere and stomach commutes in traffic OR a neighborhood that's usually pricier, where kids are more independent but also interacting more with cars as pedestrians, and the tradeoff is you can walk and transit to more (but not all) of your daily errands. And sadly, for many, living in the city actually means not that much different from living in suburbia, just less green space and the traffic is at your doorstep instead of down the block.
So you've got 4 points of comparison - an urbanist dream, an urbanist present-reality, a suburbanist nightmare (which isn't completely off), and suburbia. The urbanist present is one i'd prefer to the rest, but I understand the desire for suburbia compared to that, while advocating for the unicorn.
Advocates of "dense, urban, walkable places" have, for decades, grotesquely failed in properly organizing and marketing themselves and their beliefs. There isn't even a succinct descriptor or label for us, like "pro-life" or "green", which I'd reckon reduces our group political impact/influence by 90% or more. There's no shared vocabulary, and it's not on the political radar.
You can see the effects of this in the misfiring "missing middle" movement. "Densification" can mean a deliberate project of building a human-scaled town of narrow streets and small shops, or it can (and in my experience almost always does) mean simply grafting five-over-ones onto the existing car-dependent landscape - amounting to a Trojan horse to line the pockets of corporate developers while putting far more cars on the road, and worsening noise, congestion, crowding, etc. for the existing residents. Add that there is often a tie-in (even if only rhetorically) with a laundry list of leftist causes and ideological hobby-horses, and the crude conservative caricature of "liberals coming for the suburbs" is all too frequently right on the money.
After 100 years of crazy experiments on human settlements, we have such a poor understanding of all these issues now. So yes, we have very imperfect choices, and you’re 100% correct in your description that the historic American small town is, in fact, urban. It’s simply how we built human settlements for thousands of years, before the Great Experimenting began in the 1910s and 20s.
That all said, I definitely think there’s a fairly sizeable percentage of Americans that really like their suburbia. I have many family members in this camp. They understand what I like and why, but it’s just not for them. We, as urbanists, should also be honest that some suburbia is quite lovely and can be very liveable. It’s not all one, broad brush.
Or people just prefer suburban life and are reasonably rational about that. I know I do, I have zero interest in living in a city ever again. Maybe different people just have different preferences, and should be allowed to choose for themselves.
You and your readers might like my substack, The New Country Town, and even better, the book it is based on: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00U0C9HKW
Yeah, ideally I prefer a large manor house in a walled estate (at least 5 acres) across the street from a grocery store and a metro stop where I’d be walking distance to everything (very high density, for other people). And the government should subsidize this